


his eyes are wide and his mouth is thin (I just can't hear what he's saying)

by basketofnovas (slashmarks)



Category: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)
Genre: Amnesia, Dreams, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 16:36:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17026257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slashmarks/pseuds/basketofnovas
Summary: "I have come to regret so much," a voice whispered in those dreams.And then her own, gone cold and demanding with a subtly different intonation, like someone else speaking from her mouth: "Tell me about your regrets."





	his eyes are wide and his mouth is thin (I just can't hear what he's saying)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Bazylia_de_Grean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bazylia_de_Grean/gifts).



> I hope my recipient enjoys the fic! I tried to combine two of your prompts, about Jedi training and Ajunta Pall.
> 
> Title from "Tired of Sleeping" by Suzanne Vega.

What stuck with her in her waking hours was the feeling of desperation from the dreams.

They weren't visions, the way the dream about Revan and Malak had been. Bastila didn't, as far as she knew, share them. She didn't have the images seared into her mind in technicolor glory, either. Which left it an open question as to why she was having recurring nightmares - if they were really nightmares - except that given the turn her life had taken lately that wasn't such a surprise, was it?

"I have come to regret so much," a voice whispered in those dreams.

And then her own, gone cold and demanding with a subtly different intonation, like someone else speaking from her mouth: "Tell me about your regrets."

All entirely normal nightmare territory, if not nearly coherent enough to really be nightmarish.

So it was only dreams that left her barely awake and gasping with a need so intense it was like nothing she could remember feeling before in her life; clouded by despair that brought tears to her eyes in the mornings. She had wanted to know the answer so much, had felt certainty that the solution was just beyond her grasp and frustration that made her want to die for not having it.

Unfortunately, she had only a vague idea what any of those emotions were about. Probably it was nothing; it was a dream, after all, and didn't your brain make up the emotions alone? She thought she had heard that once, like dreaming about reading a book without actually forming legible text.

And given that, it was insane to worry about what it was, to hunt, in her waking hours, for any recollection she could scrape together of the problem or the solution she felt certain she had come up with. She knew that it was useless ; and she couldn't seem to stop herself from doing it anyway.

Fortunately, with Bastila overseeing Jedi boot camp she didn't actually have that much time to waste dwelling on dreams.

She drilled with her sword until her shoulders screamed at her in the mornings and then with a lightsaber. She read until her temples throbbed, too, which was the more troublesome part. She was used to combat drills and hard work, used to being a soldier, and used to studying, too, for her language proficiency - but the things the Jedi had her reading were painfully obscure, treatises on mysticism and abstracted ethics and the connection between all living things. She read until she couldn't keep track of what she had already gone through, until every text seemed oddly familiar and she swore she was being directed to discuss the same questions and write the same essays.

And then there were the Force sessions. They were painful in their simplicity, in their total lack of resemblance to anything she could remember doing before. Bastila, or sometimes Zhar, would talk her through the process of meditation, or feeling objects in the force, or levitating herself; and she would do her best to cooperate but the problem was that there was nothing to try for, nothing she could understand the process of failing or succeeding at.

She could do push ups until her shoulders ached, run a ten mile course with a pack half her weight on her shoulders and study into the night, but she didn't have the faintest idea of what it meant to reach out with her mind and grab a chair or a datapad.

"It isn't a surprise," Zhar said to her. "Adults rarely take to the training as easily as children, and even children take a long time to grasp the first steps. You have been working for less than two weeks, apprentice. Let go of your frustration with yourself."

This surprised her, because she hadn't voiced any frustration and she had an excellent sabacc face; but she supposed Jedi were supposed to be able to sense your emotions. "I'm not used to failing this badly," she admitted, staring at the smooth pebble she was supposed to be lifting.

"The more you worry about failure, the more inevitable it becomes," he said, and standing, "The same time tomorrow, apprentice."

"Yes, Master," she said, trying to stem the tide of irritation, and left the courtyard with relief.

It was possible that the frustration she felt in her dreams was only an outlet for that waking frustration, come to think of it. Certainly, the more she worked on the Force, the more often she had the dreams. She would go to bed after an exhausting series of questioning by two masters at once on the precepts of the Code and how they related to the Force and fall into a sense of endless and timeless questioning in her sleep, just as frustrating as the meditation session she had had earlier. It seemed clear that the dreams and the lessons were related.

The night she spoke to Zhar about her frustrations, she had the clearest one yet. She still remembered snatches, waking, but more than ever before of the context - a stone cavern, a glowing blue light; and a terrible, sweeping sense of guilt that made her doubt the idea that the dreams were merely an extension of her frustrations with training. She'd done nothing to feel so terrible about.

"There _has_ to be a way to avoid it," she remembered saying. She recalled the cold stone under her boot soles, so cold it seeped up her legs. "There must be an alternative path." But not what she was searching for an alternative _to._

She had heard over and over that if she was frustrated in the course of training she was supposed to talk to Bastila, to turn to Bastila, her bonded partner and her most frequent teacher. She was supposed to ask Bastila if she didn't understand a lesson, if she wanted to practice, if she needed guidance.

She had not been exercising this option much, mostly because she was at least a little acquainted with the Padawan now and frankly it struck her as a cruel direction to give - cruel to Bastila. Yes, the girl commanded battles - she had trouble believing this sometimes - but she was also a good ten or fifteen years younger than her, had recently been freed from a stint as a slave, and looked as though one more problem might be the last straw that sent her into tears. It wasn't that she distrusted Bastila, or thought her incompetent; it was just that she felt absolutely no desire to add to her problems.

But they were together all the time now and you had to talk about _something_ when you shared three meals a day and half your working hours with someone, so eventually it slipped out. "Do you ever have strange dreams?" she asked, recreationally stirring a cup of tea she was definitely not going to drink. 

"Strange?" Bastila stammered, sounding inexplicably nervous about the question. "What do you mean?"

"Never mind. It's nothing."

She had woken exhausted, with a sense of hours behind her, crouched in that dark cavern. The questioning had been hopeless that night; her dream self had not believed in an answer, but had stared into the blue light nonetheless.

It made her feel hungover, and that annoyed her because she hadn't been properly trashed since before Taris. There was no party scene on Dantooine that she'd found. (Probably the teenage apprentices and Padawans had alcohol stashed somewhere if she knew sentients at all; but they hadn't invited her, and at over thirty she didn't feel much desire to join the kids anyway.)

"You can tell me," Bastila said, putting down the porridge she had been picking at and managing to sound self-assured for once. "Being a Jedi means being there for your companions. And if it helps you get some sleep, that might help with the training."

She laughed; Bastila had her there. And she didn't want to discourage the girl when she actually sounded confident. Perhaps Bastila was just the type who fell apart on her own, but could handle anything if she had someone else to be strong for. "It's probably nothing," she said, putting down the tea cup and taking a bite of fruit. "Nothing to do with the Force. But I've been having these dreams lately." She trailed off, awkwardly. It was so trivial a problem; was it even a problem?

"What happens in the dreams?" Bastila stirred a handful of nuts into the porridge.

"I don't remember," she admitted, drumming her fingers on the table thoughtfully. "It's mostly the feelings I wake up with - I'm frustrated, and I'm desperate, I need to find _something._ And I'm so, so afraid that it can't be found." Fear had not previously occurred to her as an emotion from the dreams, but as she described them it came to her, clearly. "I _need_ it, but I can't find it."

"A weapon?" Bastila asked, head cocked.

Bastila's questions drew out memories she didn't know she had. "No. An answer. It's - I have this problem, it's complicated and messy and no one's ever found a solution. But I need to answer it, and I know it _must_ be possible, I just can't work out how. And if I don't, then we're all going to die, and it will all be for nothing."

She felt absurd describing it, because it was clearly a stress dream. They were all searching, searching frantically for a way to save the galaxy from Malak. "I think the problem has something to do with people?" she ventured; but here the memories dried up.

But Bastila was watching her intently, biting her lip. She said, "How are you trying to solve it? In the dream, I mean."

"I'm - questioning someone," she said, trying to think the thoughts, to feel the emotions of the dream as she went over it. "They have experience, they failed, and I need to learn from their failure because they're - an eye witness, I think, but they don't remember."

That night, she stood in the cavern again, and she could see more clearly, clearly enough that she knew that what she had taken for natural rock was hewn by sentient hands; that she stood in a tomb, not a cave. She felt a darkness around her more profound than night, than any natural cavern, than even the blackness of space, though she could see perfectly well. And she looked into the glowing light, the being she was questioning; and she woke with one question on her mind: "How did you fall?"

She didn't speak to Bastila about the dream again, but the feeling of the cave was on her mind when she meditated, and for the first time, the rock in front of her floated, delicately, upward.

**Author's Note:**

> The question Revan is asking over and over in the dreams, essentially, is why Ajunta Pall's Sith turned on each other and destroyed their own work.


End file.
